Hello to all of you. Hope you've had a great month. It has been exciting times for my resume. Hopefully my bank account will start to follow soon lol.
As the narrative director and lead writer for a transmedia project titled Xtreme Saga, I'm currently involved in the production and distribution of a lot of different types of content. Our main focus right now is e-publishing a novel, which I've written 29/36 chapters for as of yesterday, and a web-comic adapted from the novel, which I co-write. We just published the 4th issue of the comic and the third chapter of the novel this week. We publish new content every month, so if you like youth friendly sci-fi with serious themes, I encourage you to check it out. And please share the link on your social media channels, if you wouldn't mind.
When I'm not writing Xtreme Saga, I'm usually working on my own fantasy novel series. I'm currently in the midst of finishing the second draft of the third book in the series. Just one chapter left to add and then I can finally move on to the presentation draft edits.
Additionally, I do freelance acting as often as possible. Really happy to say that I've been cast for a commercial filming next week that's one of the highest paid commercials I've done this year.
Keep working and your day will come. Hopefully your bank accounts will be as blessed as my resume. ;)
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Terrence Sellers Hello again, Terrence. I’ve just watched The Rise of Mera episode and loved it. I have so many questions!
How did you get involved in the project?
How long did it take you to plot the story - scenarios, symbolism, characters?
How do the YT episodes link to the Xtreme game?
Are there any other Transmedia elements to the story?
How do you hold the narrative together across different media?
I’ll stop there!
Thanks for being a part of the IYW experience!
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Hi Terrence Sellers! Thanks for sharing!!
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Hi Terrence Sellers , Happy IYW! Great to hear about all the positive momentum.
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Geoff Hall Thanks for checking it out. I'll try my best to answer your questions.
1. How did you get involved in the project?
This is actually a very long story. But the short version is that I am quite possibly the only Ivy League trained screenwriter that is also a native English speaker/writer with a professional tech marketing background and a large writing portfolio currently living in Taiwan. All these elements came together at the same time along with a bit of good old fashioned nepotism, or networking as we like to call it. ;)
2. How long did it take you to plot the story - scenarios, symbolism, characters?
Originally, Xtreme Saga was meant to be only animation. Before I wrote the pilot, I plotted out the first season as a 13 episode arc. That probably took me just under a month. Before we started production of the first episode/pilot, I wrote 3 30 minute episodes. They cut my budget when we were still producing the pilot, so I actually had to squeeze all of the original first season highlights into the first episode. However, there was talk of a feature during that whole process, so I actually wrote a feature based on the original season outline I'd written. But then they let me write a novel to fully tell the story that the animation was meant to be. So I outlined the novel based on that original season 1 outline and the feature script I'd written.
I've spent about a year writing the novel. It's nearly finished at 29/36 completed chapters.
3. How do the YT episodes link to the Xtreme game?
The YT episodes don't link to the game. That was produced before I was brought in to write the animation. I'm actually the one who came up with the title 'Xtreme Saga'. As the company's name is XPG (Xtreme Performance Gear), they like to use Xtreme in everything they can. But the game is not canon and really has no story. But we do hope to make a game based on the novel eventually.
4. Are there any other Transmedia elements to the story?
Currently, the project includes animation, novels, and web comics. On top of that, Mera is involved in a lot of other projects including streaming shows, product presentations, merchandise, and product licensing of her image. Another important transmedia aspect of the story is that many of the characters, objects, and concepts are named directly after products produced by XPG. For instance, the character Xenia is named after XPG's laptop product line. Prime is the name of their system management software. A lot of the symbolism and characters is taken directly from their products, which I also play a major role in naming.
5. How do you hold the narrative together across different media?
This is something that I have thought about a lot. It's very difficult to do when you have a limited budget and different people with completely different goals and indicators of success. And personally I think we could do a lot better job than we have/are on this topic.
The way it currently works (it did not start out this way) is that the novel is the foundation for everything. The story starts with the novel, as it's the most detailed version of the plot. I write the novel alone. The novel chapters are given to the comic storyboard writer, and he produces the first draft of the comic and the storyboard designs. I then rewrite the comic dialog for continuity. The animation, which I also write alone, but with much more oversight from the other producers on the project, is little vignettes from the novel that don't fall perfectly in line with the novel, due to budget and time constraints.
I think everything could be a bit better aligned, but the differences in budget, productions times, and the people involved in each medium cause a lot of struggles to keep everything running together at an even pace.
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Fantastic, all the work you put into it.
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Terrence Sellers Hi Terrence, sorry, I’ve only just seen this reply. Thank you for your in-depth answers, they’re greatly appreciated.
And OMG, I’m wondering how you’re maintaining your sanity. You are a man of amazing talents and I really admire what you’re doing with this saga.
Many Transmedia gurus point out the difficulty of ‘holding the narrative together’ across the various media, but from what you say, it seems that when I’m plotting the storylines of the Transmedia elements to my animated series, that the best thing is not to be too precious about ‘holding it together’?
Those gurus focusing on the holding the narrative together, state that it’s because people who are new to that world need to be able understand the story and will not venture deeper because of this kind of narrative disconnect. However, from what you are saying, I think that if people love the story, the saga you have created, they are going to explore it with great curiosity, passion and joy, yes?
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Geoff Hall Our thinking is that if we can hook them with 1 medium, the story will hopefully be compelling enough to get them to explore the others. I'd say currently the comic is the easiest to digest while also being the most visually appealing. So we spend a lot of time and resources promoting the comic, as it's the only medium we translate into multiple languages currently, with the hope that it will lure people to the novel and animation.
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Great work Terrence!
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Very cool, thanks for sharing!